Hello from 慢速中文 slow-chinese.com

[Weng.Xinyu]

 

Hello everyone, I'm Xinyu Weng from Taizhou, Zhejiang.

As I studied English and German, I benefited a lot from listening-materials like Slow English and Slow German. I also have international friends, from whom I lerned that there's hardly Chinese material in form of which I just mentioned. So I built a website called 慢速中文Slow Chinese, (www.slow-chinese.com). It's actually a simple Weblog with Chinese articals as transcript and an audio stream of each reading of the text. The text is simple, and the reading is slow. I hope you take a look at it, I'll be very happy if it's helpful to your Chinese. Any advice and critic is welcome!

I started 慢速中文Slow Chinese several months ago, and keep updating every week. Then Roddy and some other friends from this Chinese-forum reminded me of posting an ad here. At first I didn't have enough posts, after working on the content and other technical problems of the site, I think it's time to let people know about it. So I'm doing it.

 

Visit us：www.slow-chinese.com

 

    

Thanks for attention!

[trien27]

端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

"Fifth day of the fifth month" in the Chinese lunar calendar is NOT "中国农历的五月五日", but rather "中国农历五月初五".

There's no celebrations of any Chinese "holidays" on May 5th [Gregorian calendar].

慢速中文

[Gleaves]

I really enjoy your site, please keep it going.

Weng does not mention it, but you can subscribe to the slow-chinese podcast. I can view the full transcript of each show on my ipod as I'm listening. Good stuff.

[Meng Lelan]

慢速中文, great site, love the sound of the guy's voice!

It's the only podcast I now listen to these days. And he's very on-topic. Take a look at what he did for the character 囧 recently.

I tried all kinds of podcasts including Chinese Pod, Popup, etc and their rapid recordings of Chinese chat melted down my hearing aids. Plus the content of those podcasts kept drifting off all over the place like they have attention deficit disorder.

谢谢 to Xingyu for doing this.

[querido]

I enthusiastically agree with the above praise for Slow Chinese.

[seesaw]

端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

As a native Chinese speaker, I would say it is pretty OK to say "中国农历的五月五日". You can consider it a long version of "(中国)农历五月初五". Although "五月五日" (or the like) is usually used to refer to "the fifth day of May, the fifth month" of the Gregorian calendar, it is also a general term that can be used to refer to "the fifth day of the fifth month" of any calendar. In this case, people usually put the name of the specific calendar before it. And "的" is used to make the whole expression, which is not commonly seen, easier to understand. The long expression instead of its short counterpart was used in the blog to make it easier to understand, I guess.

Similar expressions like "农历的五月五日" (for 五月初五) and even "农历的一月一日" (for 正月初一) are actually used in circumstances where the the speaker or the listener is not familiar with the Chinese lunar calendar, or sometimes, the Chinese lunar calendar is the very subject of the conversation.

[xianhua]

This is an excellent idea and website. Many thanks to Xinyu Weng. It's such a bonus hearing things said slowly whilst learning.

[semantic nuance]

It's great. Thank you for doing this. I believe it will be of a great help for Chinese learners. Keep going!

[Weng.Xinyu]

Quote:

端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

As a native Chinese speaker, I would say it is pretty OK to say "中国农历的五月五日". You can consider it a long version of "(中国)农历五月初五". Although "五月五日" (or the like) is usually used to refer to "the fifth day of May, the fifth month" of the Gregorian calendar, it is also a general term that can be used to refer to "the fifth day of the fifth month" of any calendar. In this case, people usually put the name of the specific calendar before it. And "的" is used to make the whole expression, which is not commonly seen, easier to understand. The long expression instead of its short counterpart was used in the blog to make it easier to understand, I guess.

Similar expressions like "农历的五月五日" (for 五月初五) and even "农历的一月一日" (for 正月初一) are actually used in circumstances where the the speaker or the listener is not familiar with the Chinese lunar calendar, or sometimes, the Chinese lunar calendar is the very subject of the conversation.

Many thanks to both trien27 and seesaw, thanks for pointing out the problem.

Surely you're correct trien27,农历的五月五日 is not the perfect way, but try google it, you'll find a lot of results of people using the same expression. As here 农历 has been mentioned , then followed by 五月五日, it is quite clear what I mean.

At first I was thinking about the level of the language I use, that brings the question - how hard should I write? The text is intended for those, who understand 85~90 percent of the reading for the first time. As a native speaker, I have no idea which words are easier and what kind of expression is taught in the teaching material. It takes time to find the suitable level the keep the balance. So when started the first posts, I cared too much about the choice of word and expression. Then some people told me, they don't want it to be too easy and the most important thing is, it should be original. I really appreciate that sense of uplift, so please expect 慢速中文's better articals.

[Meng Lelan]

The articles should be in the original. Even beginning students can tell when the writing has been changed to make for easier reading because the writing no longer feels natural and smooth.

[Jim]

Had a listen to three of the podcasts earlier and just wanted to congratulate Xinyu on a fantastic resource.

[HashiriKata]

@Weng.Xinyu: I don't mind the changes of the kind as the mentioned "农历的五月五日". It's your judgement as to what would be best for the majority of your listeners and I do indeed appreciate your trying to make things easier for the users.

However, since you speak very clearly and slowly, and you also give out the transcript, I think users can look up things for themselves. So it seems advisable when possible to preserve the Chinese, idiomatic ways of expressing things; and simplify things only when you think there are reasons for the users not being able to look them up or to get the right meaning.

I enjoy your reading and thank you for the effort. The podcasts are fine at the moment but I would suggest that at some later stage, you could consider getting a co-worker to relieve you a bit of the hard work and to give the podcasts some varieties.

Congratulations & best wishes!

[Meng Lelan]

It really has to be a lot of work doing all that by yourself. Do you write all the articles yourself or do you find them in the Internet, the news, etc?

[imron]

One thing you might also like to try is having a fast (newsreader speed) version for each article. This way, people could start off with the slower version, and then move on to the faster one once they were familiar with it.

[Meng Lelan]

...oh, please, no, no, no, not the fast newsreader speed version, please, no, no.....

[imron]

I meant in addition to the slow version. If presumably your goal is to be able to understand things at that speed, why not have both versions to compare?

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, okay...yes, that could be added as an option....just please keep the slow speed...life's so fast paced enough as it is...

[Weng.Xinyu]

It really has to be a lot of work doing all that by yourself. Do you write all the articles yourself or do you find them in the Internet, the news, etc?

Nowadays I write all the articals, for historical or cultural articals, I mostly collect material from the Online-Encyclopedia like Wiki and 百度百科 to process, it's impossible to conduct research into all those subjects in the lab, my job is only simplifying and introducing. For some other topics like Chinese people's personality and preference I just write down my experience. What different people say are different, I try to close to the mainstream and bring you fresh ideas.

[PhilipLean]

Weng.Xinyu

I can't read most of the written words but I find your reading speed is really good for helping me focus on recognizing the characters and associating them with their sound.

Thank you for such a great resource.

[PhilipLean]

Weng.Xinyu

I really enjoy the articles that are based on your own observations.

For some other topics like Chinese people's personality and preference I just write down my experience. What different people say are different, I try to close to the mainstream and bring you fresh ideas.

My area of interest is society, culture, technology and social change. You personal views provide some very good insights into some of the things I find very puzzling about modern China.

I find that studying the precommunist period, particularly the era 1910 to 1947 helps me to understand a lot of the things I encounter in discussions with Chinese people. So many personal ideas seem to have survived the communist era or have been only slightly modified by it.